Gita 16.16 Desires and fears cover our consciousness completely with illusion

Transcript

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thank you aneka chitta vibhranta Krishna is speaking here about the characteristics of the demoniac in terms of their consciousness and in terms of their actions here he is saying aneka chitta vibhranta their consciousness is pulled in various directions by their many desires earlier he has said in 16.11 and 12 asha pashisatair baddha there are hundreds of thousands of desires that they have chintam aparimeyam chav that is 16.11 so desire and fear are the two primary forces that drive the mind mad we could add to this anger also which is basically frustrated desire but so Krishna has already said that there are immeasurable anxieties and countless desires hundreds of desires so now with all these pulling the consciousness the result is aneka chitta vibhranta their consciousness the embodied consciousness of the soul is pulled in different directions one is consumed by illusion and being thus consumed moha jala samavrata so here it’s a significant word used moha is illusion, jala is net samavrata, avrata is covered samavrata is completely covered so by the network of illusion one gets completely covered Krishna has said earlier in the third chapter he has talked about how selfish desire, kama covers the consciousness so in 3.39 he says that lust covers the consciousness avrata now what we could do so here Krishna is continuing this desire covers and when desire is thwarted or even there is possibility that desire will be thwarted then there is fear so desire and fear completely cover the consciousness Krishna is using the idea of trapping through different ways earlier he had said desire acts as a shackle or a noose which drags people down now he is using moha jala that net of illusion a shackle is used to imprison or bind someone, a net is used to trap someone, a fish or something like that so the living being is basically imprisoned trapped and the reason for this trapping is one is strongly attached to the desire for worldly gratification and that desire for worldly gratification patanti narakeshu cha patanti because of that one falls to hellish conditions one is unclean nakama bhoga is a compound word that Krishna has used earlier also in 16.11 when he has said chintama parimeyam cha pralayantama pashyataha kama upabhoga parama etavad iti nishyataha kama upabhoga so he is saying that the enjoyment of the senses kama is enormous and that is what they consider to be their life’s primary goal and here he is saying patanti narakeshu cha patanti one falls down to hellish conditions because of this living, Krishna has used the word ashu cha also earlier in 16.10 when he said that kama-mashita-dushpuram dambhamanam-dhanmita-mohad-gruhitva-sad-grahan pravartante ashu-chivrataha so pravartante one engages in one takes up unclean vows so we all need to purify ourselves of the many contaminations that are binding us in material existence and these contaminations need to be seriously dealt with by the consistent living according to shastric principles which Krishna will talk about at the end of this chapter but for the ungodly instead of determining their action according to scripture their action is determined by their own desires normally we say this is my desire so we can say that we determine our desires but then as desires grow they determine us desire enters into our consciousness as one small idea or suggestion but from there it moves rapidly and takes over our consciousness and once it has taken over then it just doesn’t let anything get away it just makes us wild with our own condition sensitivity sensitivity in the sense that our consciousness becomes obsessed with the objects that fulfill the desire and our consciousness becomes deadened to everything else and thus we become incapable of facing life’s negativities with anything steady even life’s temptations we just get buffeted by desire here and there so when we talk about the jala the moha jala samavrta this is that we have so many desires and we have so many fears associated with the desires that what do I work for? what do I work to achieve? what do I work to protect? these thoughts drive the consciousness mad the person just doesn’t know how to cope with this overwhelming attack of desires and thus one ends up driven mad by this perplexed, overwhelmed, maddened by the incessant attack of desires and the consciousness is what is consumed, is caught, trapped completely covered so an alcoholic sees the whole world in terms of getting alcohol or not getting alcohol just can’t think of anything else because that craving for alcohol is driving the person mad similarly for us whatever be our particular desire it covers our consciousness so this covering is not exactly blinding us to everything it blinds us to everything except the object of our infatuation and just like a horse often its face is covered over so that it can look only ahead and not look anywhere else and that’s how we end up getting trapped by illusion and the way to deal with this illusion is by harmonization with scripture which we will discuss later if we don’t harmonize with scripture then we suffer hellish agitation in our mind even in this life and because of our wrong doings